After the shutdown of Google URL Shortener, the internet was looking for the next best option. There’s no correct answer because primarily the best service depends on your needs and expectations. There are quick and easy to use short cutters with detailed dashboards and brand monitoring tools. However, twitter uses its own twitter Link shortener, but for other social media and personal websites, large and small companies, we need a shortener tool.
We have compared the leading providers and how they stack each other to find the best and free URL shortener.
What’s makes a URL shortener best?
Short cutting URLs make sharing long links easier. Say you want to put a link on your business card, advertising, or while sharing a link on social media, but it’s difficult to remember those long links and takes extra space. A shortened URL takes up less space, makes your text more memorable and clean.
Further use of shortened URLs creates variations on a single link so that sourced traffic can be tracked easily. For instance, you may create a short Twitter URL, a different one for Facebook, and the third one for an e-mail.
Many URL shortening services provide comprehensive monitoring tools to display click on a connection, location, and language. You may use this information to assess the click rate that your audience likes and the devices from which your content is viewed. You may also carry your unique domain name and build your own branded service through other providers.
Lot’s of free URL shorteners are open. And most URLs have a free level of service, but you also have to pay for extra features like metrics and configuration. The URL shortening services which cut the list are reliable and easy to use, and for a specific purpose, each of them stands out as the “best.”
List of Best and Free Link shortener
1. Bitly
Bitly is a full-service URL shortener for businesses. You can use it anonymously to shorten long URLs and get on the trail if your needs are modest. Yet Bitly is differentiated by its business proposition. Bitly is so quick and easy to use, part of the appeal. It has a complete dashboard where you can track your visitors’ location, organic shares, etc. in more than 20 real-time data points. Tracking campaign tools are also easy to use.
Using a free limited Bitly account, you can customize your shortened URLs back half, track click rates and find information on your top referrers, but only for 1,000 non-branded links each month. This is a great free program which may be very useful for individual small companies.
The Basic Plan offers a free personalized domain, allows 1,500 links to be created every month, and gives you more information about who clicks about your links. There is an extra personalized pricing option for company users if you want more from Bitly.
Bitly is the best URL shortener for large companies looking for brand and track links. It is an excellent choice for small companies, bloggers, and random websites who want to generate short URLs to follow their information for a small number of campaigns.
- Free plan: Yes
- Payment plan: $35 / month.
2. Rebrandly
Rebrandly is like any other URL shortener, its appeal is somewhat unique. It claims that brands, whether it’s a product or an individual, appreciate personalized links to content from all over the world. Your free plan includes five custom domains. These links can be used on-site, business cards, or publicity.
Rebrandly provides tools to monitor the popularity of each link and generates an automatic QR code.
- Free plan: Yes
- Pay plan: $29 / month
3. Polr
Polr is an open-source project which enables people with technical expertise to host their own shorter URLs. It is available from GitHub and the Polr project page. You can use their tool if you have programming capabilities.
Though similar to Yourls, an additional free and open-source URL shorter is, the slicker appearance of Polr is a modern, streamlined design. (If you are so inclined, it is written in PHP and Lumen with MySQL as its primary database.) Polr provides a sample view if you only want to check the central GUI.
- Polr price: Free
4. Tiny URL
Free URL shortcut, TinyURL is in the game for a good reason since 2002. It is a useful tool for creating a short link that never expires if you are in a hurry. TinyURL can suggest a shorter URL, or the result can be adjusted.
TinyURL offers a bookmarklet, a tiny piece of javascript that adds to your web browser’s toolbar that provides a quick connection with a click from a website. It then takes you back to TinyURL and gets the answer.
TinyURL is completely free and anonymous to use but does not contain notifications or statistics on your link.
- Tiny URL Price: Free